Friday, 28 July 2017

Amongst
the many problems which the Brexiteers never really thought through is the
question of the arrangements for the border between the UK and the Irish
republic. If the UK were willing to
consider remaining in the single market and customs union, then the problem
would be greatly diminished, but given the outright refusal of both the
government and most of the main opposition party even to consider such an
option, the issue could end up becoming one of the major obstacles to progress.

Initially,
some in the UK Government seemed to be suggesting that the Irish Republic could
carry out UK border checks in its ports and airports, seemingly insensitive to
the way in which treating the Republic as being somehow ‘part of the UK’ for
customs purposes would be received by an independent state. Subsequently the UK Government has suggested some sort of ‘hi-tech’ land
border across Ireland, a suggestion which has not gone down well in Dublin,
which sees any reintroduction of a land border as being in danger of re-opening
past divisions and damaging both parts of the island. Their response
has been to propose that the Irish Sea should become the border.

Unsurprisingly,
the idea of imposing customs and passport checks between one part of the UK and
another (effectively treating the north as part of the Republic for customs purposes)
has not gone down terribly well with the DUP in the north of Ireland. One of their responses
has been to suggest that there are only two options – there will either be a
hard land border, or the Republic will have to follow the UK out of the EU. As an exercise in cold logic, it’s hard to
fault that, although as an understanding of political reality it fails
miserably, and would lead inexorably to the imposition of a hard border.

But
it also underscores the underlying attitude of many Brexiteers from the outset
on two points in particular. The first is
that Brexit only ever made any sense at all as a precursor to breaking up the
EU, and the second is that the problems caused by Brexit are somebody else’s –
in this case, the Republic of Ireland. It’s
another example of the UK’s sense of entitlement and exceptionalism that the
problems should all be resolved by others bending down before the might of
Britannia.

Thursday, 27 July 2017

In
his latest remarks on immigration, Jeremy
Corbyn seems to be moving his party further and further towards the position
and rhetoric used by UKIP. Worse still,
he seems to be as determined as UKIP to blame the immigrants and/or the
European Union for the failings of UK Government and UK legislators.

He’s
actually right in drawing attention to one of the problems, which is unscrupulous
employers and agencies bringing in workers from other EU countries – primarily
Eastern Europe – and paying them very low wages, sometimes even below the
national minimum wage. One of the ways
that they get away with this apparent breach of UK law is by providing
transport and accommodation and then deducting those costs from the pay of the
workers concerned. The question, though,
is who is to blame for this?

Reading
Corbyn’s comments, one might reasonably conclude that it is a consequence of
the ‘freedom of movement’ within the EU, and that Brexit would therefore enable
a UK Government to put a stop to the practice.
However, the real problem here isn’t with the EU at all – it’s with the
inadequacy of UK legislation covering agency workers, and with unscrupulous
employers taking advantage of that inadequacy.
It doesn’t require Brexit to end this exploitation; it merely requires a
UK Government with the political will. On
that score, the workers concerned have been badly let down by successive UK
Governments, Tory and Labour alike. And
their failure to act is one of the misdirected reasons for an increase in resentment about
foreign workers in the UK.

Perhaps
if Corbyn gets the chance, post-Brexit, he might lead a government committed to
taking action against this form of exploitation. But for the long term, it’s more likely that
legislation will be shaped by the Tories than by Labour. And they’ve already made it clear that their
preference is for less control over the way businesses employ people not
more. Deliberate obfuscation over the cause
of the problem could end up making things worse, not better.

Wednesday, 26 July 2017

This
article in Monday’s Guardian by
Shadow Trade Secretary Barry Gardiner has drawn a great deal of criticism for
saying, in essence, that Brexit is going to make us all worse off, but that’s
what people voted for and that’s what we must therefore do. As far as the conclusions that he draws are
concerned, I agree with the criticism.
It should be incredible that the main opposition party can conclude that
a policy is a really bad idea and then go on to support it with enthusiasm. He’s not alone in taking this strange view of
leadership by politicians – one of his colleagues
said much the same thing yesterday, but went on to add that the Labour Party’s
position could be flexible if public opinion were to change. It’s a complete abdication of leadership and
principle, and suggests that, at any time, the Labour Party’s political
philosophy is whatever a perceived majority happen to think.

There
are parts of Gardiner’s analysis, however, with which I entirely agree. His opening paragraph:

“Most trade agreements arise from a
desire to liberalise trade – making it easier to sell goods and services into
one another’s markets. Brexit will not. Brexit arose from key political, rather than
trade, objectives: to have control over our borders, to have sovereignty over
our laws, not to submit to the European court of justice (ECJ), and not to pay
money into the European budget. When
negotiations start it will be the first time countries seek a trade agreement
with the clear understanding that they are increasing barriers between them.”

reflects
a point that this blog has made a number of times: there is no such thing as a
‘soft’ Brexit, there is only continued membership under a different name.

(Although
I don’t entirely agree with his claim that both sides are entering the
negotiations with the understanding that they are increasing barriers between
them; I suspect that the Brexiteers really don’t understand that even now. That’s one of the worst aspects of their
position – and it’s largely mirrored by that of the Labour Party when they talk
about having “the exact same benefits”
whilst being outside the single market.)

I
agree with his statement that Brexit arose primarily from political rather than
trade objectives, and that the only way to give expression to those political
objectives is to opt for the so-called ‘hard’ Brexit being pursued by the
government. That ignores, of course, the
frequent statements made by Brexiteers during the referendum campaign that
Brexit did not mean leaving the single market, but that was politicians
campaigning, a process in which lying has become the norm. It should always have been clear that, if the
slogans about taking back control meant anything, they meant leaving the single
market, whatever politicians looking for votes may have said at the time.

Gardiner
is simply being honest in what he says. A
Welsh Labour MP, Wayne David, made a similar point yesterday, when
he said that it would be very difficult to accept membership of the single
market as being compatible with Brexit.
Whilst many of us see the so-called ‘Norway Model’ as more attractive
than Brexit, I fully understand that it actually means a greater loss of sovereignty
than formal membership of the EU, since it requires adherence to laws and rules
with no representation in devising them.

The
real problem facing us is not people like Gardiner or David who are openly and
honestly spelling out the consequences of the vote that was taken last year,
but the fudging politicians who pretend that it is somehow possible to give expression
to that vote whilst remaining a member of the EU in all but name. It isn’t, and the better and more honest
position is to argue that a mistake has been made on the basis of an utterly
false prospectus and give people the opportunity to correct it. The idea that democracy is – or ever can be –
about a single irrevocable vote on one day in one set of circumstances is a
misuse of the word ‘democracy’. We need politicians
to provide honest leadership on the issue, but they mostly seem too cowardly to
do that.

Tuesday, 25 July 2017

Last
week, the Western Mail carried a story (to which I’ve been unable to find a
link) which referenced the views of Professor Richard Tuck
of Harvard University in the US on the question of Brexit and Corbyn. I hope that I don’t over-paraphrase a complex
argument if I say that, in essence, he argues that membership of the EU
prevents a politician like Corbyn from implementing some of the things he
supports, and that Brexit, followed by a Corbyn election victory, would set the
UK free to pursue a much more socialist agenda.
It is, in a sense, the classic ‘left’ case against the EU, seeing the EU
as institutionalising neo-liberal policies inimical to the interests of working
people as understood by the classic British left. It’s an attractive argument, and there is
much about it which I naturally support.

However,
as a counterpoint to that, there was an article in the Guardian last week
by John Harris which suggested that underpinning the views of Brexiteers like
Liam Fox is the belief that “Brussels is
not the liberalising, pro-business force that reality suggests, but an eternal
brake on enterprise and initiative that has to be comprehensively left behind”. On this understanding of what the EU is
about, Brexit followed by the election of a more right-wing Tory government is
the outcome which they desire, since it would set the UK free of all the
constraints on neo-liberalism which membership of the EU imposes.

It’s
like two sides of the same coin, but can they both be right? It is, of course, entirely possible that both
are correct in their diagnoses, even if the proposed cures are very
different. The treaties and agreements
built up under the EU over many years do indeed place constraints on the
freedom of governments to give state aid to industries, and they do indeed
place constraints on the ability of companies to exploit their employees. Both sides concentrate their attention on
those constraints that they don’t like.
We end up with an unholy alliance of people who are agreed that the constraints
should be removed, but are hugely at odds about how the consequential ‘freedom’
should be used. They can both be right
about the existence of constraints, but they can’t both be right about what
will follow their removal. But there’s much
more to this than simply deciding which of the two versions of an EU-constraint-free
UK is the most (or least) attractive.

Four
things in particular struck me about the arguments here.

The
first is that, from both viewpoints, it’s not Brexit that makes the difference;
it is the policies which the UK chooses to implement afterwards. Freed from the admitted constraints, would
the electorate choose a more state-directed future under Labour or a more
laissez-faire future under the Tories?
Whilst the short term might well look to be Corbyn’s as things stand at
present, the longer term electoral history of the UK – and more specifically
England in this context – does not fill me with confidence. Constraining the right looks the more
attractive option, even if it also constrains the left.

The
second is whether those constraints imposed by membership are the only thing
preventing the implementation of socialist policies. Personally, I think not; the world has become
more intertwined - and global capital does not exercise its undoubted power
solely through the institutions of the EU.
The history of “socialism in one
country” is not a pretty one, and globalisation has made its achievement
more, rather than less, challenging.

The
third is about confusion between institutions and policies. For sure, policies can become embedded in the
way institutions work, but it is never necessarily or irreversibly so. And there are people with similar views in
other EU member states. So which offers
the best hope for the future – seeking to change the UK, or seeking to change Europe? While changing the EU’s underlying economic philosophy
looks like a more complex and long-term task that I might wish, I tend to the
view that it is ultimately going to be a better solution. Issues such as climate change require collective
action over a long period, and need an international perspective.

Fourthly,
what about Wales? The problem with the
‘left’ case against the EU is that it implicitly assumes the continuation of
the UK, to provide a source of non-Tory MPs from outside England. Not for nothing are people like Corbyn
lukewarm at best about devolution, not to say hostile to independence; their
vision for the UK depends on anti-Tory votes in Wales and Scotland. At the same time as Labour’s position
requires that continued union, Brexit also makes the alternative future –
independence outside the EU – considerably less attractive and practical as an
option, unless Brexit leads to the collapse of the EU, which would ‘normalise’
such a status. That looks highly
unlikely to me.

I
know that there are many independentistas
who sympathise with the views put forward by Professor Tuck, because they would
want Wales to have the freedom of action he describes. I suspect, though, that the ‘freedom’ is a
mirage based on wishful thinking, and the better outcome for Wales is as a
member of a multi-national and multi-lingual union of free nations. Changing the nature of that union is the real
task in hand – Brexit is an unwelcome diversion.

Monday, 24 July 2017

In
responding to last week’s release of details about high salaries for some BBC
staff, Corbyn made some good points. He
started by saying that the issue isn’t just about a few very high-paid performers
in one organization, and that the issue of gender inequality goes much further
than that. I agree. He moved on to talk about the
wider issue of pay inequality, and suggested a statutory limit of 20 times the
lowest salary in an organization for the pay of the highest paid. I might quibble a bit about the number 20,
but any number quoted in this context is going to be essentially arbitrary and
it’s better to start with a high limit than with no limit, so I agreed with him
on that as well.

Then he went and spoiled it all by adding the words “in the public sector”. Why?
Pay inequality between the highest paid and the lowest paid is a much
bigger problem in the private sector than it is in the public sector, and
insofar as pay inequality is a driver of wealth inequality and inequality of
opportunity, the private sector represents a much bigger problem. It’s as though politicians, of all colours,
can’t resist falling into the meme of believing that the public sector is
somehow less useful and needs more control than the private sector, despite all
the evidence to the contrary.

On frequent
justification for that line is that public sector salaries are somehow being
paid for out of ‘our money’, whilst private sector salaries are not. This is demonstrable nonsense. Taking just the world of broadcasting as an
example, there are three different mechanisms by which we all pay the salaries
of those involved. For programs on the
BBC we pay a licence fee for possessing and using a television set; for
subscription services such as satellite or cable we pay a monthly fee to allow
access to them; and for services supported by advertising, we contribute to the
salaries of those involved every time that we purchase any product
advertised. And in every case, that is
true whether we watch any of the programs or not. And in the case of programs supported by
advertising, we make that contribution even if we have no television.

In
all cases, the salaries of broadcasters and managers are paid for out of ‘our
money’, it’s only the route by which we pay that is any different. Broadcasting is but one example, similar
statements could be made about any other industry or activity – ultimately, the
salaries of those involved are paid for by us, whether as customers or
taxpayers, and the argument that we have a more direct interest in the salaries
of those paid for by one particular method stems from ideology rather than
logic. It starts from the underlying assumption
that the public sector is somehow a ‘burden’ rather than an asset, and it’s disappointing, to say
the least, to see Corbyn effectively starting from the same viewpoint.

Friday, 21 July 2017

A
promise by a politician is rarely worth the paper on which it often isn’t even
written, and there is no reason why a promise to electrify a railway should be
any different. Breaking the promise to
electrify the line to Swansea will not exactly enhance the reputation of those
who’ve done it, but in all fairness, they are currently hard at work breaking
much bigger promises than that one.

I’d
give them almost full marks for inventiveness in selling this as an advantage
because we won’t have the disruption of all the engineering works in carrying
out the upgrade, but I do wonder where that line of argument will lead. It could easily become an argument for not
doing a lot of other things. There is,
after all, quite a lot of disruption involved in building hospitals, schools,
roads …

They
are right in arguing that it will give us better more modern rolling stock with
more seats more rapidly than waiting for electrification all the way to Swansea
with electric-only trains, and they’re also right in arguing that it won’t make
any difference to journey times between Cardiff and Swansea because the
restriction there is the track, not the source of power or the rolling
stock. That does, though, rather gloss
over the fact that the new trains will be heavier, more expensive to buy and
run, and less environmentally friendly than the all-electric ones we could have
had if the project had gone ahead. I’m
not particularly convinced either about some of the arguments put forward about
this being a huge blow to the image of Swansea in trying to attract investment. I would have thought that the quality and
reliability of the transportation would be more important than the source of
power.

There
is another advantage (in the sense of it being an ill-wind which has none) to
the decision taken yesterday which few seem to have even realised let alone commented
on, and that is its impact on those of us who live even further west of Swansea
(although I entirely understand that people in London might not be fully aware
of our existence). That advantage is
that bi-modal trains don’t have to terminate their journey at Swansea; like the
existing aged beasts they will be perfectly capable of travelling past the end
of what seems to be regarded as civilised Wales and out into the sticks where
some of us insist on residing.

One
of my concerns from the outset has been that the electrification project would
take away the few through trains which we currently enjoy. As a short term expedient that might have
been something up with which we might have had to put, but the problem with the
electrification project has long been that it has been seen as a single one-off
project rather than part of a longer term vision to electrify the whole
network. We still need that longer term
vision of an all-electric railway; all that’s really changed is that the
section of line from Cardiff to Swansea has been added to that part of the
network for which that vision is required.
I hope that those who so far seem to be mostly interested in making
political capital out of the decision will also take that on board and not
restrict their arguments to one short stretch of line.

Wednesday, 19 July 2017

It’s
only a few weeks since the UK General Election and already Labour seem to be
rowing back on their promise to write off student debt, with claims in the last
few days that it was more of an 'ambition' than a firm policy, even if it didn’t
exactly sound that way during the election campaign.

Here
in Wales, Plaid Cymru, the party which helped Labour introduce tuition fees in
the first place during the One Wales period, is now criticising Labour for increasing fees
to match the latest change in England, claiming that the proposal goes against
the Labour Party’s manifesto. They
presumably assume that we’ve all forgotten that when most of the Plaid AMs
voted to introduce fees in the first place they were also going against their
own manifesto commitment. (And it’s
worth noting that the politician taking the decision to increase fees is
actually a member of the Lib Dems, another party with a somewhat, shall we say
‘chequered’, history on the question of fees.)
The whole issue of student fees seems to be one which unites governing
parties in supporting them whilst opposition parties unite in opposing them,
and that’s true whichever party forms either the government or the opposition.

The
underlying question has two strong ideological elements to it. The first is whether services supplied by the
government should be collectively funded or paid for by those who actually use
them, and the second is to do with the question of the availability of money
for the government to pay for things.

Regular
readers will know that I’m a committed supporter of the idea that services
should be funded collectively rather than paid for individually, and I entirely
accept that that is a position which flows from my own ideological
standpoint. In the case of university
education, I accept that those benefitting from it often end up better off
financially than those who don’t, but a properly progressive taxation system
would ensure that those with the highest earnings also make the highest
contributions to paying for services.
(And, as an aside, people who end their education at ‘A’ level tend to do better financially than those with GCSEs, and those with GCSEs do better than those without. Why single out one particular type of
education for payment at point of use?)

But
let’s turn to the second ideological factor – the availability or otherwise of
money. Governments, of whatever colour,
tell us that ‘we can’t afford’ to provide university education without charging
for it. But like all the other things
that they tell us we can’t afford, it comes down to policy choices. How much the government raises in taxes, how
much it borrows, and how much it spends are all political choices. When the government needs a few billions for
some project or other – such as buying the support of the DUP or starting
another war somewhere – it can always find it, because the UK Government
controls the money supply.

However,
the Welsh Government does not control its money supply. It has long been a theme of this blog that
governments are not like households, and they really don’t have to balance
their budgets in the same way, but more accurately, that is only true for
governments which can control the supply of money – like the UK
Government. The Welsh Government’s
budget, on the other hand, really is more like that of a household, and a
household whose purse strings are controlled elsewhere and which can be
arbitrarily loosened or tightened.
Whilst I might have had more sympathy for Labour’s response if they had
been more honest and spelled out more clearly that any promise relating to fees
in Wales was wholly dependent on the election of a Labour Government for the UK
as a whole (and therefore on voters in England), their basic point that they
can only find the money to do something different in Wales if London gives it
to them or they cut elsewhere is a valid excuse in itself.

The backtracking by UK Labour is a far more
serious issue. The interesting point is
that in his interview McDonnell actually acknowledged that half the nominal
amount of student debt will never be paid back in any event. And figures elsewhere suggest that 70% of
students will never repay the whole of their debt. In essence, the whole edifice of student
loans and debts is based on little more than an accounting sleight of hand.

The
UK Government pretends that it is not paying student fees because the students
are paying them. But the students do so
by borrowing the money from the Student
Loans Company
which is wholly owned by the UK Government.
And where does their money come from?
From the Government, of course.
So, instead of using borrowing, taxation or the magic money tree to pay
fees, the government raises the same money from the same sources to fund loans
through the SLC, and for accounting purposes assumes that it’s going to get
around half of it back over a lengthy period.
The other half – the bit that will never be repaid – will, in effect, have
already been paid by the government – exactly what the government says it
‘can’t afford’ to do as a reason for introducing tuition fees in the first
place.

Before
the election, it appeared that Labour were offering hope to young people that
they could enjoy a university education in exchange for paying a fair share of
tax if they earned more when they took up employment. It even looked as though they understood that
governments are not like households.
After the election, it appears that they’re reverting to type and
falling in with the Tories’ attitude towards finances after all.

Tuesday, 18 July 2017

It’s
unclear whether the Chancellor actually used the word ‘overpaid’ in relation to
the salaries of public sector employees, but there’s a lot less doubt that he
and many of his Tory colleagues really do believe it to be true. (At least, they believe it to be true of some
public sector workers – as I understand it, Ministers and MPs are also public
sector workers, and I’ve never heard any Tory suggesting that they are
overpaid.) I’m more interested, though,
in how they have reached this conclusion.

It
seems to be based on a very simplistic comparison of public and private sector average
earnings, as though the mere fact of a difference between the two means that
one group are ‘overpaid’. I’m not
convinced that it is based on any sort of like-for-like comparison, and it’s
worth bearing in mind that decades of Labour-Tory government have seen many
low-paid public sector jobs outsourced to the private sector. In simple mathematical terms, moving low-paid
employees from the public sector to the private sector increases the average
salary in the former and decreases it in the latter. That tells us nothing about the relative
value of either.

Even
supposing that the comparison is properly conducted and compares work of ‘equal
value’ (a phrase which itself could be the subject of extensive debate), the
mere appearance of a difference in averages is as likely to mean that one group
are underpaid as that the other are overpaid.
It all comes down to one’s perspective.
And that question of perspective is key – from the Tory perspective (with
the obvious exception of work done by really important public sector workers
like Ministers and MPs, i.e. themselves) the value of work in the public sector
is inherently lower than the value of work in the private sector. That’s not about assessing value added, or
contribution made to society or the economy, it’s about a simplistic axiomatic
belief that work done in the public sector is a bad thing per se.

More
generally, some of the other comments made expose a belief that salaries should
be determined with no regard to the cost of living or the needs of employees
but solely on the basis of any recruitment difficulties. From that viewpoint, if there are no
difficulties recruiting enough people to do the job, then there is no need for
any salary increase, regardless of whether the living standards of those
recruited, as well as those already doing the job, are falling year on
year. (Again, this rule doesn’t apply to
themselves, whose salaries obviously need to be increased regularly – despite the
oversupply of willing candidates.) The
best bit of all is that they get to call this ‘an economy which works for all’
without being challenged.

Monday, 17 July 2017

The
recent UK General Election produced something of a mixed message as far as
Plaid is concerned. On the one hand,
under the Westminster system, “it’s goals that count”; near misses are
valueless and soon forgotten. On that
basis, an increase from three seats to four counts as progress on the
scoresheet, and the closeness of two of those results is immaterial. On the other hand, support leached away
almost everywhere else; I’m not alone in wondering whether the repeated
messages about needing one of those mythical beasts called a “progressive
alliance” (led, inevitably, by Labour) was not in effect an open invitation to
simply vote for the real thing and support the Labour Party.

There
have been some calls since the election for Plaid to adopt a stronger stance on
independence for Wales, making it the key part of the party’s appeal. It’s an interesting answer, but I found
myself wondering what the question was if that’s the answer. If the question is about improving Plaid’s short-term
electoral appeal, then making a position which has the support of only a small
minority in Wales the centre of its campaigning seems a particularly strange
response, and one unlikely to achieve the desired outcome. It would be a silly response.

That
means that the issue becomes one of what Plaid is actually for – a question
which has been fudged for electoral purposes for decades now. Because if we ask a very different question –
how do we being about Welsh independence – then depending on a national party
which declines to discuss the issue is an even sillier response. The argument about the role of independence
in the party’s campaigning is actually a proxy debate about the purpose of the
party. Is it to bring about that
constitutional aim, or is it about winning elections to try and bring about
smaller incremental change in the shorter term?
The party has, for years, tried to do both, and failed; failed, in fact,
to the extent of appearing shifty and dishonest about its real aims.

In
that context, Adam Price’s comments
in Saturday’s Western Mail were an interesting response to the issue.

One
of the things he said was that “Yes Cymru
is a very, very lively political movement which takes a more radical line on
the independence issue than Plaid is able to do”. The particular word which hit my eye in
that sentence was the word “able”. What exactly is it that prevents Plaid from
taking a radical line on independence if that is what its leaders and members
want? The answer, of course, is ‘nothing’. If independence was an objective that they
really, seriously wanted to achieve, then there is nothing at all that prevents
them from making that argument. There would, though, be consequences; as
discussed above, it would probably have a negative electoral impact for the
party in the short term. (I use the
words ‘short term’ because the whole purpose of campaigning for independence
would be to increase the numbers supporting it which in turn should lead to
increased electoral support over the longer term.) But to argue that the party is not ‘able’ to
make the argument is to make the aim of independence secondary to the
short-term electoral objectives.

Leaving
that aside, there were a few other issues which struck me about the suggestion.

Firstly,
when we look at “those areas where Plaid
is not currently breaking through”, compared to those where it is, there is
one obvious factor which differentiates the two. That factor is the Welsh language, or rather
the percentage of Welsh speakers in a particular geographical area. Wholly unfairly, but unarguably true, Plaid
is still associated overwhelmingly with the language. And the implication of having a sister party
working in the areas which Plaid is failing to reach is that Plaid would
withdraw from those areas and leave the field free to a largely English medium
party of independentistas. It’s a very radical proposal and might even
work; somehow, though, I doubt whether that was the intention.

Secondly,
the comparison between the Labour Party and the Cooperative Party is an
extremely poor one. The second of those
was effectively swallowed up by the first many years ago; although it has its
own structures and conferences, it is always subordinate to the needs of the
Labour Party and knows its place. Taking
a “very, very lively political movement
which takes a more radical line on the independence issue” and
subordinating it to the needs of a political party which is afraid even to
discuss the issue looks more like closing the issue down than advancing
it. Those campaigning for independence
outside the structures of any political party should be very wary of being seen
as the servants of, or even a front for, one particular political party in
Wales.

And
thirdly, I’m far from sure that turning a ‘very, very lively movement’ into any
sort of political party, whether as a sister or not, is the best way of
advancing the cause of independence. I’m
much more attracted to the idea that a campaign outside formal political
structures is a better way of building support.

That
is not the same as saying that there shouldn’t be more than one political party
in Wales seeking the support of those desiring Welsh independence. Having multiple independence-supporting
parties is a normal and healthy situation in nations such as Wales. If turning Yes.Cymru into a political party
isn’t the way to achieve that, how else might it be achieved? One obvious step would be for the Welsh
branch of the Englandandwales Green Party to declare independence and adopt a
position similar to that of its Scottish sister party on the constitutional
question. Sadly I see no signs of that
happening at present.

That
aside, what is the obstacle preventing the emergence of alternative independentista parties? The answer, it seems to me, is the electoral
system under which we operate. It
encourages and incentivises people who otherwise have little in common in
political terms to coalesce in a single party for fear of splitting the vote,
and to continue to cling to that party even when it is making little or no
progress. I like Adam’s suggestion that
there should be more than one party occupying the independentista part of the spectrum, but it seems to me that the
pre-condition is either a willingness of Plaid to withdraw from large areas of
Wales or else a change in the electoral system to STV. Of the two, I think the second is extremely
difficult, but still more likely and achievable than the first.

Tuesday, 11 July 2017

The
UK Prime Minister has seized on Donald Trump’s statement that a trade deal with
the UK can be done “very, very quickly” once the UK has left the EU. According to the Sunday Times, she claimed it
as evidence that Brexit is back on track.
Funny, though – I can’t remember her ever saying that it had gone off
track; the official position has always been that everything is moving along in
accordance with her plan.

Anyway,
I know that she’s desperate and looking for straws to clutch at, but is there
any other leader, of any country, who would take this sort of superficial
fluffy statement from Trump at face value?
He’s shown repeatedly that he can say one thing one day and the complete
reverse the next, all the while arguing that he’s being entirely consistent and
that anyone who denies that is fake news.
Indeed, his behaviour is so erratic that some have even suggested
that he would have been replaced by now if he were CEO of any large company.

Given
how long other deals to mitigate or reduce barriers to trade – whether tariff
or non-tariff – have taken to negotiate, I’m instinctively reluctant to accept
that a deal which is good for both parties can be put together as rapidly as
the Brexiteer politicians repeatedly tell us.
And knowing how few experienced trade negotiators the UK has only makes
me further doubt whether a deal agreed quickly would be in the interest of the
UK.

But
perhaps that’s the point. All those
countries which are, according to May, lining up to offer quick deals to the UK
might indeed, as she seems so willing to accept, be good friends wanting to
help us adapt rapidly to the new post-Brexit reality. But there is another possibility - they could
be more like vultures spotting a weak and injured Prime Minister and seeing
potential advantage to themselves. Only
time will tell.

Monday, 10 July 2017

Today’s
Western
Mail headline declares that there has been a surge of support for a ‘soft’
Brexit according to an opinion poll conducted for the paper. On closer reading, what the poll actually
seems to say is simply that the balance of opinion between remaining in
membership of the single market and controlling immigration has shifted in
favour of the former. That’s hardly
surprising as the implications become clearer on an almost daily basis, and the
lie that was spun last year about being able to do both becomes increasingly
obvious.

I
remain unconvinced, however, that there is any such thing as a ‘soft’ Brexit,
and the politicians that tell us that there is are being disingenuous. In this instance, I agree with the comments
made by a spokesperson for Tory group leader Andrew RT Davies and quoted in the
report – “There is no such thing as a
soft Brexit or a hard Brexit. You either
leave the European Union or you don’t. Remaining
bound by EU laws, unable to make new trade deals, and unable to control
immigration would mean that we haven’t left at all.” That is surely true – that which is being
described repeatedly as a ‘soft’ Brexit amounts, in effect, to continued
membership but without the influence and input which comes from membership.

That’s
not to say that I think that would be a bad thing; it would certainly be
preferable to the complete departure from the EU which is now the official goal
of Labour and Tory alike. It’s just that
I think it’s a dishonest position to hold.
If politicians really believe that continued membership is the right
solution, it would be preferable for them to come out and say so – and campaign
for that outcome. Anything else is just
regurgitating the lie of the Brexiteers during the referendum, which was that
we can retain all the perceived advantages with none of the perceived disadvantages.

It’s
true, of course, that any politicians adopting the stance that I suggest would
initially at least be pilloried by the likes of the Daily Mail (although some
of us might see that as more a badge of honour than a stain on their
character), but opinion is already shifting, and I suspect that they’d find
themselves on the right side of history.
And in the long term, they’d earn more credibility by leading than by
waiting until they can tamely follow public opinion.

Friday, 7 July 2017

One
of the constant refrains from some quarters in relation to Brexit was that the
UK only ever signed up to an economic union – the Common Market – and not to a
political union of European nations.
Whilst it’s true that many people have long believed that (I’m not
convinced that those who signed the UK up to the EEC in the first place were
much more honest than the Brexiteers who’ve led us out), it was never true in
fact. There was always a political
element to the organisation; indeed, for the founders, it was always much more about
a political vision of a peaceful united Europe replacing the warring states of
the previous centuries.

In a
very real sense, economic union was more a means to an end than an end in
itself. Whilst there were some in the UK
who also signed up to that, the overwhelming majority of the UK’s politicians
have always appeared to treat membership on a more transactional basis: what we
get versus what we put in. That gulf in
understanding about the aims of membership is part of the reason for the
failure of the UK’s leaders to understand why they cannot have the economic
benefits whilst the UK puts itself outside the political arrangements. That is, ultimately, the basis for Barnier’s warning
yesterday, but the reactions in interpreting it as a threat or hostile action
serve only to underline that gulf in understanding.

But
it isn’t only with regard to our relationship with the EU that UK politicians
seek to reduce issues to economics, and see everything in terms of the pluses
and minuses of the balance sheet. The
same is true when it comes to the question of independence. In the UK context, there is always a demand
for Welsh and Scottish independentistas
to spell out precisely the economic consequences of independence, as though it
were the act of independence which changes things rather than the policies
pursued thereafter. That isn’t true
everywhere, however. Here’s
an interesting article by Iain Macwhirter of the Herald in Scotland, looking at
the situation of Slovenia and Slovakia, two other European countries which have
gained their independence in recent years.
The point which he makes very effectively is how little debate there was
about economics before those countries took the plunge and went their own way.

As
he puts it, “Ultimately, the case for
independence will always stand or fall on a nation’s desire for autonomy, not
marginal economic gain.” It’s a
point with which I entirely agree. Ultimately,
Wales and Scotland will become independent countries only when and if the
people of those countries want to be independent and the task of independentistas is to create that
desire. That doesn’t mean that the sort
of economic policy which different parties and groups would like an independent
Wales to follow has no part in the debate, but that will involve the sort of
choices which can only be made post-independence, and will to an extent at
least depend on the nature of post-independence relationships with England,
Scotland and the EU.

Post-independence
choices will also depend more on which politicians we choose to govern the
country than on the fact of independence itself, and there are more routes than
one to a successful future. The article
to which I linked discusses some of the economic decisions taken by Slovakia
and Slovenia. They’re not the only
options and they’re not examples which I’d particularly like to see Wales
follow. The point about independence is
that we would be free to make our own choices, and not be bound by those of
others. But the bigger point is that we
have to want to take that responsibility first – and currently, we’re far too
timid and frightened to do it, a situation which isn’t helped by a ‘national
party’ which basically accepts the economic constraints placed upon us by the
limited imagination and transactional bias of UK politics.

What
‘independence’ means varies over time. I
concur with Macwhirter’s conclusion (although I’d substitute Wales for
Scotland) when he says that “It is not
possible to envisage an independent Scotland that is not part of the EU, or in
a halfway house like Norway. And it is
equally very hard to see what future awaits Scotland as part of a UK that has
left Europe behind”, which is why I’ve always seen Brexit as more a political
question than an economic one.
Alternative futures await us, but only when we have the desire and
courage to pursue them.

Wednesday, 5 July 2017

Brexiteer
and honest aren’t words that I would normally use in combination, but in one
important aspect at least they clearly apply to the newest
member of the UK’s ministerial team handling the Brexit negotiations. In comments he made in 2010, Steve Baker
called not just for Brexit, but for the whole EU to be “wholly torn down”. Labour,
Lib Dem, and even some Tories have piled into the issue claiming that having
someone with such views negotiating on behalf of the UK will be
counter-productive, and one Tory MP said “It
just reveals what the extreme Brexiteers have been about all along. It’s not enough to take the UK out of the EU. They want the entire thing to fall apart”.

Well,
yes. All of that is true, but why is it
such a surprise? Destroying the EU has
always been the intention of most Brexiteers, even if they’ve mostly been
rather more reluctant to say so. Indeed,
it’s the only position which really makes any sense of much of what they have
said. During the referendum, many of
them told us that we could have all the economic benefits without membership,
but never told us exactly how that could be achieved. There is one – and only one – scenario in
which that was ever going to be possible, and that was if the EU reformed
itself into a much looser entity, based almost entirely on economic agreements
and without any of the political elements which were the founding principle
behind the organisation. In short, the
successful Brexit which they promised was predicated on an assumption that Brexit
would result in a sea-change in attitudes in the other 27 countries.

And
it isn’t just among the Little Englander type of Brexiteer that bringing down
the EU makes sense. I’ve noted before
that Welsh independence outside the EU makes less sense to me than full Welsh
membership of the EU, because the existence of the EU redefines the meaning of
independence in a European context. But
take away the EU, and revert to a position where independence is again redefined
as meaning the status of a country which is a member of a much looser trading
arrangement, and an independent Wales once again looks like the normal state of
any European country rather than something rather exceptional. For independentista
Brexiteers, destroying the EU is also the logical conclusion of their position.

In
fairness to Mr Baker and his ilk, bringing down the EU is a coherent and
consistent world view; the problem is that it shows so little understanding of
the drivers which led the original 6 members to create the EEC. Not all the more recent recruits to the EU
wholly share that original vision of a different type of Europe, but that
vision remains much more powerful in the seats of government of Europe than the
Brexiteers have ever understood. Instead
of weakening the bonds tying the other 27 together, Brexit has succeeded in
strengthening them – and getting rid of what has probably been the most awkward
and disruptive member state may well turn out to be the biggest British
contribution to European unity in history.

It
would be an unintentional contribution, of course. The UK’s position has always been ‘divide and
rule’, and we’ve already seen elements of that in the UK’s attempts to split
individual members of the EU off into separate negotiations and discussions –
with talk even of aid in exchange for support in some case. The strategy hasn’t changed at all; it’s just
that, in this case, it has the potential for backfiring spectacularly.

The
reaction of those who disagree with his position was predictable, but I’m not
at all convinced that it will make any difference at all to the position of the
other 27 countries in dealing with the UK.
I’m sure that they’ve realised all along that the only logical context
for Brexit was the collapse of the EU – they’re as capable of interpreting the
demands for all the benefits with none of the limitations or obligations as I
am – and will already have assumed that to be one of the UK Government’s
aims. Insofar as it makes any difference
to anything, the domestic context is the more important. A more open statement of the real aims of the
Brexiteers can only assist sensible debate within the UK.

Tuesday, 4 July 2017

When
the Freedom of Information legislation was introduced in 2000, I thought that
it was generally a good thing. Enabling
people to have access to data held about them, as well as digging out
information that public bodies would often wish to keep hidden are both
worthwhile objectives. In practice,
though, it has become a tool for lazy politicians and journalists to produce
easy stories which are often based on different interpretations of the
questions asked and different ways of holding similar information; used in this
fashion, I’m far from certain that it has had the enlightening effect which was
intended.

A few weeks ago, the Tory AM for Aberconwy used a series of FoI requests to generate a ‘story’ which highlighted the
difference in approach adopted by different local authorities across Wales to
the issue of Fixed Penalty Notices. It
plays to a couple of favourite Tory memes, neither of which have much basis in
reality.

The
first is that there are “alarming inconsistencies” across Wales. Well, it’s true that there are
inconsistencies – different authorities assign different priorities to the
issues covered by Fixed Penalty Notices and therefore use different methods of
enforcing them. What, exactly, is
alarming about that? If there is more
public concern about dog fouling, for example, in one area than another, why on
earth shouldn’t the relevant authority respond to that by taking a stronger
line on enforcement and putting more resources into it? What would be the point of having local
authorities at all if they all gave exactly the same priority to every issue
and all set about things in exactly the same way?

And
the second is that some local authorities might be using the notices as a means
of generating revenue. Well again, it’s
certainly true that authorities which put the most resources into pursuing the
relevant offenders will be generating more revenue than other authorities – although they’re also incurring more expenditure in the process. But is there any evidence – even the merest
shred – that authorities are deciding on their approach to enforcement based on
the possibility of generating more revenue?
If there is, you’ll be searching for it in vain in this particular
‘story’.

In
one astounding statement, the AM said “The
system is there to penalise those found to be in breach of the rules but it is
clear that something isn’t working because the number of fixed penalties is
going up dramatically each year.”
How exactly does the fact that an increase in the number of people being
penalised prove that a system to penalise people breaking the rules isn’t
working? It seems to me that it actually
proves that it is working,
and that the problem is with the number of people breaking the rules.

And
what does ‘over-zealous’ mean in terms of enforcement? If there is no suggestion that notices are
being issued to people who haven’t broken the rules (and again, I see no
evidence of that in the ‘story’), then in what sense is issuing a notice
considered to be ‘over-zealous’ as opposed to implementing the law? If the Tories want to change the law so that
only some offences currently liable for fixed penalties remain so, that’s an
entirely legitimate position for them to take.
But supporting the law and then arguing that not all offenders should
be penalised – which is ultimately what she seems to be arguing – is a very odd
position to take.